sentences change lives

David

There are at least two lies Satan will whisper in your ear about your significance.

LIE #1: You’re not important.

There are 7 billion people in the world (give or take a few several handfuls of millions).

What makes you special? You aren’t significant, especially compared to that significant person over there.

Sometimes we’re able to shut down such thoughts…other times, we’re crushed. We follow the road most traveled. Destination, self-pity.

The answer to Lie #1 rests securely in your identity.

That you’ve been created in the image of God. You and every person you meet are image bearers of God. “We are God’s workmanship,” wrote the Apostle Paul to some folks in the 1st century struggling with identity.

Just like art curators and experts identify works of art based on certain characteristics or styles of an artist, you are identified as this remarkable work of God because you bear His image. You have the capacity to think and feel and love and imagine possibilities of what could be.

For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.

I know. It should say “fearfully and wonderfully…” You start using fearfully in everyday conversation and I’ll change it.

For now, though, you are awe-inspiring, worthy of reverence, distinct, distinguished, set apart. Just how you felt after your last screw up, right?

Think about the fact that the Spirit of the living God inspired David to write that about you, of all people! You. You are remarkable and wondrous. A work of God.

But sometimes you don’t feel remarkable, do you?

Our failures have a way of reminding us how unremarkable we can be. It’s in those moments we feel this thing called SHAME.

SHAME tells its own lies: (Brené Brown gave a TED talk on this that went viral)

Shame says you didn’t just make a mistake. You are a mistake.

Shame says you didn’t just fail. You are your failure.

And in those moments when shame or guilt or fear or insecurity crowds in and starts telling you lies, that’s when you have to proclaim these gospel truths:

I am a work of God.

I am loved by God.

Until you are able to embrace the deep reality that you are loved by God simply for being, you will always struggle to feel significant because your identity is not secure. More than likely you will seek identity in what you do, a responsibility of some kind.

But in God’s economy, identity precedes responsibility.

It’s why God came to Abraham and established a relationship before sending Him out. It’s why God established a relationship with Moses and Israel b/f giving the law.

You have been created by God…You couldn’t be loved by God any more than you are in this very moment. Drink it in.

I’ll post Lie #2 soon enough, so check back. Better yet, subscribe and have each new post sent straight to your inbox.

Which basically means don’t say or do anything that might upset someone, even if they’re in the wrong. It’s best just to let it go, let a little time pass, and move on.

Or the classic, don’t poke your stick in it and it won’t stink.

I’ll confess that I’ve done my part of this for decades. It sounds something like-“That’s not my place.” or “It probably won’t go well, so why bother?” There, I kept the peace.

Simply put, we confuse peacekeeping for peacemaking.

Here’s the primary difference b/n the two:

Peacekeeping is passive.

Peacemaking is active.

In other words, we think we’re being peacemakers in the home, at work, or at church, but it’s actually the shadowy offshoot of glorified passivity known as peacekeeping.

There is nothing passive about peacemaking. Patient, yes. But not passive.

Peacekeeping is about protecting an illusion of calm or avoiding conflict of some kind.

But Peacemaking almost always involves conflict of some kind. It’s active.

It may be a difficult conversation. (e.g., someone is doing you wrong)

It may be a confrontation. (e.g., someone is wronging others)

It may be a confession. (e.g., you’ve wronged someone)

Making peace via these avenues means you and I will be engaged in conflict. It means we will make enemies most likely.

Since I’m writing this around Father’s Day, think about some of the men remembered and revered (not everyone will agree with my list, but you have your own). They actively sought and pursued peace:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a peacemaker. He gave a voice to a people who weren’t being heard and didn’t feel safe to speak.

Abraham Lincoln was a peacemaker who put his career and life on the line to acknowledge and honor the inherent dignity of every person no matter the color of their skin.

Jesus of Nazareth was a peacemaker whose ultimate goal was to lead people into peace with the God of heaven.

These were men of action. They had plans and goals. And all of these peacemakers have something else in common–they gave their lives in the pursuit of peace.

Peacekeeping doesn’t get you killed. Maybe an unfollow or unfriend, but not killed.

If you choose to respond to the Lord’s exhortation to be a peacemaker, you’ll end up with more unrest and discomfort in your life because of it.

It’s one of the reasons, I suspect, David writes in Psalm 34.19 that “the one who is righteous has many adversities.”

Because you just have more problems trying to follow Jesus than not. As if peacemaking isn’t enough, you love enemies, forgive 1-bajillion times, wash dirty feet, and so forth. So I get it, peacekeeping is easier now, but what about in the long run?

If you choose peacekeeping over peacemaking, what you actually do is leave the door wide open to greater and more complex problems in the future.

A failure to address things now will only be magnified later.

King David could certainly think about this from his experience as a man, husband, dad, and king

David wasn’t a great dad from the picture presented in Scripture. Well after the triumph over Goliath and his disastrous sequence of events surrounding Bathsheba, David was husbanding, fathering, and doing what kings do. But he wasn’t doing what peacemakers do. Quickly:

David’s son Amnon was infatuated with his [Amnon’s] sister, Tamar.

Amnon raped Tamar, making her an outcast in that culture.

David finds out and is infuriated, as any dad should be.

Here’s the crazy thing, though. Two verses after David is said to be furious comes this: “Two years later…” Two years passed, and we hear nothing of David’s actions to reconcile this situation, to bring the peace necessary to this massive injustice.

Absalom–Tamar’s other brother–hated Amnon and found a way to kill him. Such bitterness took root in Absalom toward David that he decided David was unfit to rule and ran him out of town. Not long after, Absalom himself ended up dead.

And there is king David left to make sense of the carnage. Two dead sons and a disgraced daughter who feels unloved and unprotected by the man who should have been looking out for her the most.

David may have been a pro at keeping the peace, but he was pathetic at making peace.

After avoiding confessions around Bathsheba and Uriah he evaded necessary confrontations and conversations with his sons and daughter.

Peacekeeping is easier now, but everyone pays for it later. As best I can tell, that’s true in business, education, church, and family.

Making peace will require making a mess, at least for a while. But to avoid it is to ensure a greater calamity in the future.

It reminds me of that whole, was Facebook the idea of Mark Zuckerberg or those tall Winklevoss twins?

At any rate, I feel like that wrong person sometimes. Especially when I look at what person X is doing or how person Q is thriving and think, “I could be doing that” or “I had that idea, too” or “Seriously, him?”

You may have a great idea, a good idea. But you may not be the right person to do it. That could be for any number of reasons–don’t have the platform, too educated, not educated enough, don’t know the right people, short on cash, maxed out credit.

King David, it turns out, had a really great idea. It was actually a good idea in the moral sense. But David didn’t get to do it. Here is son Solomon’s account of dad’s dream and subsequent denial:

2 Chronicles 6:7-10

Now it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.8 But the Lord said to David my father, ‘Whereas it was in your heart to build a house for my name, you did well that it was in your heart.9 Nevertheless, it is not you who shall build the house, but your son who shall be born to you shall build the house for my name.’10 Now the Lord has fulfilled his promise that he made. For I have risen in the place of David my father and sit on the throne of Israel, as the Lord promised, and I have built the house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

I have historically journaled my dreams and tried not to talk about them too much lest a Solomon come along and get to live them out instead of me. But at some point David must have told Solomon what he was thinking and imagining. It caught Solomon’s imagination, too. And God wanted it to be Solomon.

There’s honor in thinking big and having great ideas, morally great ideas, and not being the one who sees it to fruition. That’s okay in the economy of God’s kingdom because all credit goes to Him anyways. All glory goes to Him.

So maybe it’s time to dream out loud a bit more and share what big thing is stirring within and monopolizing our thoughts. And then to pray something like, “Lord, if not me, then someone.”